The European Union’s top court has ruled that, except in the case of illegally pirated video games, Nintendo cannot restrict users from using additional equipment with their consoles to play multimedia from other sources.

Owners of Nintendo Wii U and 3DS will know that Nintendo uses some sort of encryption on its devices that restricts the accessibility to various sorts of multimedia playback.

However, an Italian company who goes by the name of ‘PC Box’ sales these handheld consoles with an additional modification tool that can breach the encryption measures imposed by Nintendo. The case was presented in an Italian court where Nintendo filed a complaint against ‘PC Box’.

The PC Box retaliated with the argument that Nintendo should allow access to movies, videos, and mp3 audio files from any source as it doesn’t violate the company’s copyrights.

Befuddled, the Milan court reached out to the European Court of Justice to clarify the matter. The ECJ came to the conclusion that Nintendo can only protect itself against, “unauthorized acts of reproduction, communication, public offer or distribution” of pirated material.

The court further stated that the company cannot prevent usage of some additional equipment on their handheld consoles which serve ‘commercially significant’ purposes.